Hi,
I posted on here a while back about my Escort (1.6Lx 96 NReg ~103k miles), which was having some poor running problems... Well, I've had nae luck fixing them and it seems to be getting worse. I would be SO grateful if anyone has any possible advice as i'm almost out of both ideas and patience for this car...
The engine starts no problem and will run (idling or driving at speed) for approx 5-8min absolutely perfectly. Then fairly suddenly, the engine revs appear to fall and the engine begins a process of trying to keep the engine from dying by increasing the revs. The erratic engine idling continues until the engine eventually stalls (which is beginnning to take less and less time now). It also makes no difference if the accelerator is applied during this period unless the revs are increased to something like 4000+ rpm. If the car is being driven when this occurs, the car becomes virtually undriveable to the juddering and bucking. I used to be able to drive through this period which used to last up to about 15min but now the problem is so severe that the car is essentially no longer safe to drive.
So far, I have: replaced the HT leads, sparks and coil pack; swapped the MAF with another Escort that works ok, measured the resistance from the throttle position sensor (which is ok). I have also had the ECU diagnosed and it came up with a camshaft position sensor error and the sensor was replaced.
I have also sent the ECU to be tested by Allcar electronics but it came back all clear having not shown any of the symptoms described above on their test rig. ( However, I found this particularly odd as i've heard of other people with these symptoms and it turned out it was the ECU)
I have noticed that the engine appears to be running very rich as the spark plugs are very black. This, and the fact that the problem appears only after some time of operating normally, has led me to believe that the problem is temperature related and therefore could be due to a faulty HEGO (02 / Lambda) sensor. (Also, the car only just passed its emissions test at its last MOT in Jan.) Could this be true or would a HEGO fault have shown up on the ECU test? And is there an easy way of swapping the ECU with another Escort without having to resort to key code the ECU so that i can rule out the ECU as the cause??
Many thanks,
Damian